Absurd Ventures

Absurd Ventures is an independent narrative entertainment and game-development company founded by Dan Houser in 2021. The company creates wholly owned fictional universes designed to move across interactive games, scripted audio, books, comics, television, and animation. Its public launch in 2023 introduced the tagline “Storytelling. Philanthropy. Ultraviolence.”

The studio’s work is rooted in narrative design, world-building, and AAA open-world game development. Its teams develop interactive entertainment alongside audio fiction, graphic novels, and animated storytelling, allowing individual settings and characters to extend across formats rather than being confined to a single release. Current game development includes real-time mechanics and systems built with Unreal Engine 5.

Story worlds

• A Better Paradise is a near-future science-fiction thriller that began with a 12-part scripted audio series in 2024. The series reached number one on Apple Podcasts’ Fiction chart and received a 2024 Signal Gold Award. The universe has since expanded through a novel and an in-development AAA open-world science-fiction action-adventure game.
• American Caper is a crime-fiction universe centred on two damaged American families. Its 12-issue comic-book series was written by Houser and launched through Dark Horse Comics in 2025.
• Absurdaverse is a satirical dark-comedy setting being developed for animated projects and a story-driven action-comedy open-world game.

Interactive development and publishing

Alongside its transmedia work, Absurd Ventures is developing a game set in the A Better Paradise universe. The open-world action-adventure project is being made with Unreal Engine 5 and is planned for publication through Smilegate. The company also develops story-driven action-adventure work through its Absurd Marin branch in San Rafael.

Absurd Ventures Press supports the company’s book and graphic-novel activity, including distribution relationships with Simon & Schuster and Audible. Across its projects, the company combines game production with fiction writing, audio production, comics, and animation to build original narrative properties for multiple audiences and platforms.